“Cause I got too much life. Running through my veins. Going to waste”
Take That. Robbie Williams. And life in a song.
“I want to write Karma Police by Radiohead.
But I’m writing Karma Chameleon”
Robbie Williams
So it was that on a bitingly cold Saturday night I made myself a piping hot cup of tea and snuggled beneath a mound of duvets to watch the four part Netflix series on the life of Robbie Williams directed by Joe Pearlman and executive produced by Asif Kapadia, he of the incredible documentaries on the lives and sad early deaths of Amy Winehouse, Ayrton Senna and Diego Maradona. As Robbie himself states in both the trailer and indeed the series, this style of documentary series is normally reserved for people at the Pearly Gates with St Peter, but thankfully for his legion of fans the Stoke-on-Trent born singer songwriter is very much alive and well, a happily married father of four children and seemingly as happy as he’s ever been and a picture of wellness far away from the troubled teenager in the pop group “Take That” or the young man who had the world by the tail in his 20’s and 30’s. This he may have done but hounded by a domestic tabloid press who revelled and rejoiced in his downfall he wasn’t only battling with substance addiction, but also the mental health demons inside his head.
All of this and so much more is revealed within a refreshingly honest and frank documentary series that sees Robbie re-tracing his past from 16 year old starlet to singular superstar who on the precipice of failure and being dropped by his record company released mega selling songs such “Millennium” and “Angels” before my personal favourite “Feel” shot him to stratospheric fame worldwide. Bitterly angry at being dumped by Take That and even in spite of now controlling his own singular destiny he cuts a self confessed figure of a sometimes suicidally depressed man in and out of rehab to a man of sobriety in recovery selling out stadiums and arenas around the world before, both for this fan, Robbie himself, and his old band-mates, a reunion tour with Take That a decade or so ago.
After this, the documentary itself takes rather a backseat as the decade that follows is absent before the now 48 year old returns home to England and sell-out London gigs in 2022. This leaves a hole of sorts in the documentary as the shortened fourth part of the series entirely leaves the past decade to the imagination of the audience and this fan in particular was at first disappointed before, after some consideration on the Sunday morning after the Saturday night before, I rather think the picture is painted in our collective absence. Robbie and wife Ayda Field Williams look a picture of besotted happiness with four children and love pouring forth from a Williams family, and their superstar father and husband, a picture of health and happiness. As viewers we’d already seen far more than enough of a life lived through a lens and Robbie Williams now appears a man at peace with himself and with the world around him.
Bravo.
I couldn’t possibly recommend this documentary enough to you. Go see it!
Now, do you want a more personal story?
“Come on, hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I’ve been given
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a language
I don’t understand
I just wanna feel real love
Feel the home that I live in
’Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste”
As I joked on my oh so popular Twitter account (@steveblackford) on Saturday night, my teenage self often dreamed of being 51 years of age and all alone on a Saturday night with only a piping hot cup of tea and a mound of duvets for company as I watched the life story of a pop star from a band I’m not an ardent fan of but, for the sake of some in-jokes with the first real love of my life, I often pretended to be. It was the mid 1990’s and as Take That were arguably at the height of their initial fame as they transitioned somewhat from throwaway pop to a more thoughtful and mature band, I was still singing their earlier pop hits such as “Take That and Party”, “Could It Be Magic”, “It Only Takes A Minute” and especially the one, the only, “A Million Love Songs”. Get me drunk sometime (I’m a virtual teetotaller so it’ll be cheap and easy!) and I’ll sing this to my heart’s content as well as to your deep consternation and all the whilst attracting neighbourhood cats and dogs for miles around! By the time I reach the lines “Take me back, take me back. To where I used to be. And hide away from all my truths. Through the light I see” I’ll be in pieces and you’ll be wishing you hadn’t bought me that shot of tequila!
Fast forward a decade or more and this not so secret fan of Take That was still belting out their hits: “The Flood”, “Said It All” and especially “Patience”, a song dedicated to the second and final love of my life and another song I’ll sing for you on a drunken afternoon but I can’t guarantee the human devastation I’ll be in come the song’s denouement! Just look the other way as I warble “I’m feeling your frustration. But any minute all the pain will stop. Just hold me close inside your arms tonight. Don’t be too hard on my emotions” and then we’ll have a hug and laugh at the fact that I’m not allowed to be a fan of Take That as, being the Radiohead obsessive that I am, this really isn’t the done thing, but hey, I will forever be a contrarian through to the end of time.
So secret Take That fan or not, I’ve always had a huge admiration, and more off stage than on it in all honesty, for the human being that is Robbie Williams, and his song “Feel” is a masterpiece and one that cuts me so very deeply.
Suffice to say, the lyrics from “Feel” in bold here and throughout this article resonate with me and are me. To a golfing tee. I’ll return to the “role I’ve been given” later but my head speaks a language I don’t understand and haven’t since a horrific night in 1986 that I won’t be expanding upon here. That was the beginning of my mental health struggles and the blanket on which I cover these as an excuse for my poor performance as a human being. Therapy. Counselling. Treatment. I have the full house, I never shy away from saying so and can heartily recommend them to any and everyone struggling. I “ain’t keen on living either” and haven’t been for too many years to remember. It’s a badge I wear with shame and regret together with the baggage of being in such a deep, dark hole I know I’ll never climb out of and it’s why I scare myself to death and keep on running, away from those who love me and have loved me because I live inside my crumbling head and mind, I see myself coming before I arrive at any party. Overblown or not, I do have too much life running through my veins and it fucks me off beyond reason that it’s going to waste.
I’ve become a social recluse, scared of my own reactions, a shell of my former shadow (thanks, Bill Hicks) and avoid any and every social interaction open to me. I’ve been invited to an event this weekend that would have entailed meeting a football legend, a bona-fide Liverpool and England footballing legend. But I’ve cancelled. I haven’t done such a thing in well over a decade and I know I’ll fall to pieces like a wet newspaper in the rain. I’m barely in contact with old friends and my albeit sadly dwindling band of remaining family. They can’t see the human being ravaged by an inner torment that I can’t communicate to anyone lest they seriously worry for me. Since the departure of my dear old Mum for the great gig in the sky I’m as alone as I’ve ever been, deeply lonely too, and after pushing so many people away in the past, forever doing everything alone and on my own. If it wasn’t for the occasional company of my son and the light of my life…….
The role I’ve been given? For well over a decade now I’ve written thousands of articles. The past 2 years has seen me write and self-publish 4 books. The past 6 months have seen me self-publish another 7 huge and exhaustive e-books. I haven’t once checked the results of these publications in terms of sales as I won’t be able to deal with the rejection. So for the past couple of months I’ve turned my own written word into my first Youtube channel and the results are as depressingly underwhelming as the end of this article is turning out to be. I constantly try. I constantly fail. I’ve spent so much self-imposed time on my own in the past couple of years I despise myself to the point of hating the very character I’ve seemingly created. A writer who doesn’t sell books. A reader who produces the dullest videos known to mankind. I have so much life. Running through my veins.
Going to waste.
Thanks for reading. Apologies for the ending. Just rather gave up on my own apathy. Here’s the Youtube channel and assorted other nonsense to ignore:
Volume 7 of my "Essential Film Reviews Collection"